


The Nondeterminist

by Arukou



Series: Tumblr Archive the Second [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Kind-of-sort-of-soulmate AU, M/M, Philosophizing, Tony says the f word once, Tony's borderline alcoholism, Wingfic, get-together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 13:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14915849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arukou/pseuds/Arukou
Summary: The stars do not write fates. The stars don't give a damn.





	The Nondeterminist

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [dreamcathersdaughter](http://dreamcatchersdaughter.tumblr.com/) who gave the prompt: "Winteriron soulmate wing fic AU where your soulmate has inverted wings to you and your first words to each-other are written on the inside of your wings? Like if Tony has primary gold and trim red, Bucky's would be primarily red with gold? (they don't have to be those colors that's just my example) "
> 
> I’m not sure how this reads, because to be perfectly honest, I really struggle with soulmate AUs. It’s not an idea that resonates easily with me, but I kind of wanted to try as a personal challenge to myself. I also twisted the prompt a bit in terms of what indicates a match. (This is gonna have a lot of gratuitous talk about my thoughts on destiny and I am so sorry.)

Tony never did have the patience for philosophy. Well, not philosophy for philosophy’s sake anyway. As it applied to science? As it applied to morality? Important shit. People needed to think about the implications of what they did not only as it related to the present, but also as it related to those who would follow, those whose lives would be dictated by present-day choices. He liked that kind of thinking. It was where his brain functioned best.

But all the, all the fluff? Waste of time. He remembered the first time he told Steve he’d never put much stock in amorphous concepts like “soul” and “destiny” and the shock on Steve’s face.

“But, but you’ve…what about the patterning?”

“Genetics.”

“You stock it all up to strands of DNA?”

“Damn right. Genetic markers telling us who’s the best mate. Complementary T-cell matches, missing immunities, genetic innovations. It’s all right there in our DNA. Why wouldn’t it be written on our wings. Damn good way to show off what you’ve got without having to do much more than a cursory glance.”

“Then what about same-sex matches? There’s no procreation in that.”

“Having babies isn’t the only reason to be with someone, Steve. There’s more to life than good genetic diversity and having a healthy clutch.”

“Well, yeah, but,” Steve paused, flustered. He looked down, clearly troubled, and toyed with a flight feather. “What about Peggy?” he asked softly, glancing up with quietly hurt eyes.

Oh. Oh fuck. Tony rubbed at the back of his head sheepishly. He’d forgotten about that. “You really loved her, huh?”

“So much.”

“And, and you were perfect matches?”

“Yeah. Right down to this little feather with the weird black patch,” Steve said, stretching out a wing and showing off a tiny contour feather very near his ribs. The bizarre splash of ink black was vivid against Steve’s white and brown feathers. “She had the same spot. Said even the best soldiers had a black mark or two in their records.” Steve touched the patch of black and Tony had the distinct impression that he’d somehow walked in on something he shouldn’t see.

“But Peggy got married after you went down. You know that, right? She had a clutch and she lived a happy life.” Almost the moment he said it, Tony regretted it, because Steve looked positively heartbroken.

“I know. I know she did.”

Tony wasn’t sure how to mitigate the damage he’d done. He didn’t mean to make Cap feel bad, but he also couldn’t buy into it all. He was pretty sure the universe didn’t have the time or inclination to be planning out every single romantic match of every single avian on Earth. So instead he prevaricated. “Maybe it’s a matter of, you know, faith? Belief? God? You know I don’t really…um…”

“It’s ok, Tony. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”

Steve looked like he’d been kicked in the face and then watched a puppy also get kicked in the face. “Did you know Taoists believe the body has ten souls?” Tony blurted, waving his hands. “Seven for after death and three from your former, uh, mates. And a lot of religions think the soul is just part of god. That it has nothing to do with the individual avian. So really, no one has a clue anyway.”

He worried that he’d gone too far in the other direction, but Steve laughed a little, a sad hiccup, and sniffled. “I guess that’s true. I suppose no one really does know.”

Tony shrugged and hastily walked away. No one should unleash him for emotional support ever. Ever.

* * *

He was drunk the next time he ended up talking about that sort of thing with anyone, and it was just his luck it ended up being Supersoldier Lite. It was worse, because he’d been deliberately avoiding Barnes ever since he first moved into the tower. There was too much there to unpack: dossiers that gave hints but no actual facts, haunted eyes and mutual PTSD from opposite sides of a gun sight, hauntingly familiar feather patterns. Tony tried damn hard not to think about that last one.

But he’d decided to let himself have a night with a really nice bottle of Scotch and to do that he had to be in the living quarters. It wasn’t weird or worrying if you were drinking where other people could see you, that’s what he told himself. And at some point he’d looked up and found Bucky helping himself to a glass. And who was Tony to say no to someone who needed a little bit of liquid comfort?

For a while it had just been comfortable silence, and from his warm lassitude, Tony was aware of the fall of Bucky’s hair, the flutter of feathers on his one flesh wing. He groomed absently for a while, neatening and tucking down beneath contour feathers, brushing out dust, spreading oils down the shafts. Then he started talking, and Tony started talking back and soon enough they were having a conversation. It was easier being around Bucky this way, when the stakes didn’t feel so damn high, when Tony wasn’t so damn afraid of everything.

And Barnes was a nice guy. Wicked sense of humor. Tony laughed, and laughed again, caught himself tangled in Bucky’s wry, raw edge. Tony noted, in a distant kind of way, that Barnes was attractive when he smiled, when he wasn’t practicing zombie Blue Steel. And somehow, before he could catch himself, they tumbled into the topic of feather matches.

“I had a theory,” he said, slumping happily back in the couch and staring at the domed ceiling of the living area. “You know? About mathematical probabilities and how hatchlings develop in the womb and…and melanin.”

“Uh huh,” Bucky murmured. He was hunched forward, elbows on knees, his tumbler dangling loosely in one hand. Tony didn’t think he could easily get drunk, but he also didn’t think that he was impossible to knock out like Cap was. But then, Bucky looked like a panther even when he was wandering around half-awake in the morning, so maybe the easy, loose slope of his shoulders was 100% natural.

“See, the colors in our feathers, it’s all, it’s all light, right? Trick of the light. Refraction. Nifty shift of the barbs and…and…the watchamacallits. So conceivably, mothers could, like, collect genetic information via scent while they’re just walking around pregnant. Chance encounter means feathers just happen to develop matching refractive patterns. And then years later, boom. Matching wings.”

“What about brown, genius?”

“What about it?”

“Brown’s from melanin. Not light.”

“Oh. Well…well if you think about it, all color’s from light.”

Bucky glanced over, swirling his tumbler lazily back and forth. “You still remember your patterns?”

“No,” Tony lied. The stumps of his wings twitched on his back and his muscles pulled taught and painful for just a second before relaxing back down into the warmth of a good buzz. 

“Uh huh,” Bucky said again. He didn’t call Tony out on the lie, and for that, Tony was grateful.

“What about you?” Tony lazily turned his head so he could just see the slope of Bucky’s shoulders, the sharp line of vibranium alloy and solar foils that made up his prosthetic wing.

“Flashes. A set of bars here, a black tip there. Doesn’t even seem like me anymore. Feels like it belonged to someone else.”

“Bet you were a looker. Big osprey wings like that. Like a…uh…” Tony trailed off and then hastily looked away. Bucky didn’t call him on that either. Instead, he just topped off Tony’s glass and then absconded with the rest of the Scotch.

Tony didn’t blame him.

* * *

Tony tried not to think about it. He reminded himself that when he and Pepper had been going strongest, he’d been convinced their patterns matched. Maybe it was love that made things work together and not the other way around. He reminded himself that feather dye existed, that young rebels purposefully plucked parts of their wings to change patterns, bleached themselves white and then resoaked themselves in every color of the rainbow. He reminded himself that matches across different wing shapes were clearly genetic lottery and had nothing to do with cosmic design or destiny.

But when he looked at that little white star on Bucky’s right wing, that little freak confluence of contour feathers, he couldn’t help but remember that his left wing had once had a mirror image of them.

It didn’t matter. It wasn’t fate. And any romantic feelings Tony might be feeling were from proximity, from a compatibility of personality, from an instinctual desire for companionship and a warm body next to him in his nest. His fucking wings had nothing to do with it. 

Besides which, Barnes was clearly not looking for romance. Hell, most nights Tony was pretty sure all he wanted in life was a full eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Tony should know. He found him wandering the halls at three in the morning looking haunted and gaunt often enough.

They didn’t really have a spoken agreement or anything. But if Tony found Bucky wandering the halls hollow-eyed and unshaven, he pulled him down to the workshop or took him to the kitchen and forced him to drink warm milk. It was nice to feel needed. And Bucky returned the favor in his own gruff way. He quietly snuck away bottles when Tony had a few too many. He made biting remarks that left Tony laughing, unable to stew any longer in the images in his head, on the pain of his back muscles. All of the Avengers were fucked up, and they all tried to help each other as best they could, but for the first time, Tony felt like he had someone who he was working in concert with, someone on the same wavelength. They were both of them broken, and it was nice to have someone else around who knew how that felt.

So no romance. Just support. That was more than enough.

And Tony got by on thinking that way right up until the night he found Bucky down in the workshop, a fully rendered hologram of Tony at twenty-nine right in the middle of the room, wings spread wide.

Bucky at least had the wherewithal to look embarrassed as he waved his hand and banished the hologram. Tony stood in the doorway, jaws and fists clenched, outrage and mortification warring like acid in his belly. “I just wanted to…” Bucky gestured weakly and then dropped his hand. “I wanted to see. To know.”

“You had no right.”

Bucky didn’t even deny it.

“I will not have my life dictated by some freak genetic coincidence. If I want someone, I want it to be because…because they’re kind to me. Because they make me want to be a better person. Because I want to take care of them. Fate’s got nothing to do with it.”

“You’re beautiful,” Bucky said softly.

“Don’t you mean ‘were’?” Tony spun on his heel and tried to leave, but Bucky was just as fast as Steve when he wanted to be, and silent like Death.

“No. No I mean ‘are.’ When you…when you’re like this. When you’re talking about what you believe in. You’re beautiful.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Don’t you know?” Bucky stepped into him, toes bracketing his heels, arms around his belly, chest to his back, chin on his shoulder. He felt so completely surrounded. It was almost like having his wings cloaking him again.

“You’re just doing this because you saw my wings,” Tony snapped, but he didn’t try to pull away. It felt so nice to be warm.

“No. I…I kind of wish I hadn’t looked. I wish I’d just asked you. I like you, Tony, and your wings have got nothing to do with it.”

“They have everything to do with it.”

“Well, if you’re talking about how…how their loss made you who you are today, then yeah. They do have everything to do with it. I wouldn’t have met you if you hadn’t become Iron Man. But your wings, they don’t define you. Just like my wings don’t define me. They’re a part. Not the whole.”

Tony felt wound like a trap spring, liable to snap at any moment. Whether he’d hurt himself or Bucky or just collapse, he couldn’t say.

“Can we try? Please? I’d like to try.”

“This isn’t fate,” Tony said.

“No. This is just you and me. Us?”

Bucky was so warm, it was almost unbearable. It felt a little like giving up, but in the best way possible. “I like the sound of us.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://arukou-arukou.tumblr.com/post/157629481251/winteriron-soulmate-wing-fic-au-where-your).


End file.
